great merchant kings!

We, they say, would wake the power
In mountain and in mine;
And transport, from sea to sea,
The cedar, oak, and pine:
Build the bridge, and plant the town,
Enter every open mart;
Make our nation's commerce flow,--
But this is not our heart!

Many a prayer uplifted springs
O'er desk, and din, and roar;
Many an humble knee is bent
When the rushed day is o'er;
Far within, where God may be,
All exists His Throne to raise;
Every triumph of our power
Becomes a form of Praise!

God of nations, hear our cry,
And keep us just and true;
Lay Thy hand on all our lives,
And bless the work we do:
Then from every coast and clime
Land and sea shall tribute bring;
Gold and traffic, world-domain
We offer to our King!_

ANNA ROBERTSON BROWN LINDSAY

We are all traders. Each of us is endowed with some faculty, ware, or
possession which he is constantly exchanging for other things. We trade
time, talent, service, goods, acres, produce, counsel, experience,
ideals. The world is in reality a Bourse of Exchange. Each of us brings
some day his special product to the common mart.

There are traders and traders--the just and the unjust--the man of honor
and the rogue. We set values on thoughts and on transactions, on
merchandise and on philanthropies, on ideas and on accounts; and there
is a constant distribution of the affairs, as well as of the worldly
goods of men.

But in a restricted sense, we think of trade as the exchange of produce
which is material and mobile,--which may be touched, handled, weighed,
transported, bought, and sold. The substance of the earth is constantly
taking new shape before our eyes, being rearranged in kaleidoscopic
combinations, and transported from port to port, from town to town, from
sea to sea. One can look nowhere without seeing this ceaseless activity
progressing. Everywhere there is a whir of wheels, a plash of waves, a
din of assembly, as the new combinations take place.

There was a day when trade was a thing of here-and-there; a thing of
sailing ships and caravans, of merchants of Bagdad, Cairo, Venice,
Alexandria, Jerusalem, Tyre, and Damascus. Ivory, gold, gems, precious
stuffs, teak and cedar wood, Lebanon pine, apes, peacocks, sandal-wood,
camel's hair, goat's hair, frankincense, pearl, dyes, myrrh, cassia,
cinna